Maurice Swift is handsome, charming and hungry for fame. Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, he has a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. Maurice quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful --- but desperately lonely --- older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall.